new way to run the mystery shopper scam

This article highlights that now some scammers are actually paying people for small jobs for shopping before hitting them with the large western union fraudulent check. [bit.ly]

This is ultra scary! Make sure you only sign up with legitimate companies and that you do not sign up for jobs with companies that find you, only companies you found and signed up.

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$20 for a simple price comparison still sounds too good to be true! When will these scammers learn?

Seriously though, the evolution of the check cashing scam is slow because there's always someone greedy and uninformed enough to fall for the old routine. With just about every MSP having a warning on their homepage and all of the message boards having multiple threads about this, people still get taken by this every week.

Those reading here are not nearly in as much danger as the ones who can't be bothered to type "Mystery Shopping Scam" into Google.

Is there an experienced shopper out there who has ever been fooled by one of these scams?

Definitely not here. But then again I have never gotten the 'check in the mail', so evidently I have not signed up somewhere, somehow that has generated this 'fine opportunity' for me. At one time we wondered if the lists of folks who were trying the 'trial offer' at one of the pay-to-shop outfits was being compromised to send out the scams. There seemed to be too much coincidence between those getting the scam stuff and those who had signed up for one particular pay-to-shop places. It may have been identification of naive 'targets' or it may have been that they were signing up all over the place, including risky areas.

I know that one of those places being mentioned above might be Shadow Shopper. But, I can say signed up for a highly discounted 30 day Gold trial with them last December, and cannot say I got any spam at all from it; I did get quite a number of legitimate jobs, though. If they had been guilty of these associations in the past, they were not last December. I found it very useful in finding some new contacts of where shops were moving for the new year. I am planning to do another 30 day trial this month.

However, to go back to the topic at hand...I doubt, personally, that any experienced shopper has fallen prey to these schemes, but it is always possible. I did read an article a while back about a judge who fell prey to a Nigerian scam.

But there are probably a lot of newbie shoppers who fall prey...and the changing of the scam to pay for small jobs before hitting hard makes the likelihood worse, IMHO. That is because many newbs seem to not understand "shopping" that well, and without doing enough research, consider it "free money."

I remember my son telling me about being in a grocery store where an unsophisticated caucasian male was arguing with the store manager at Customer Service because the store would not send a large amount of money via Western Union to his 'friend' in Nigeria. Western Union had blocked the transaction and the man was frantic because he was 'required to send this money on to him'. Even though it was the standard--received a check, deposited it, was required to send on money--scam, the customer was adamant that HIS was not the scam.

I also have never received a single scam invitation in all the years I've been doing this, and have never registered with a pay-to-shop site either. Some of the pay sites that provide a list of companies for a one-time fee are basically scams themselves, and I think that's where the scammers may get the contact info from. I don't include Shadow in that group.

Dee, I think you are right that this new addition to the scam will undoubtedly bring in some additional victims. Shoppers should look for feedback on any new company they sign up with.

Most of these scams are based on greed or desperation of the victim. Flash's story above sheds some light on why it's so hard to put a stop to this. People will argue with you if you tell them they are being scammed, because they wan to believe that they have discovered a secret way to make money.

Although this is not the typical mystery shopping Nigerian scam, I thought I'd share an email I've been receiving daily for the past several days, sent to one of my personal email addresses. It's "FROM THE DESK OF DR. MICHAEL CHUKWUMA.UNITED BANK FOR AFRICA PLCINTERNATIONAL MONETARY FUND AGENCYINTERNATIONAL OPERATION DEPT VICTORIA ISLAND LAGOS-NIGERIA.Telephone number: +2348053619627."

He says I'm due my share of a $30,000,000 inheritance but that Mr. Kennedy Franklin, who claims to be my next of kin says I died in a car accident four months back, and to send my share of inheritance to him. "I apologize to you on behalf of International Monetary fund Agency towards this contact and proper confirmation required urgently from you if alive ." (Funny, yes?) Dr. Chuk wants me to confirm if I'm alive, by verifying and sending my name, address, etc.

It is easy to see how folks can get sucked into this stuff. After all, "all" you are being asked is to confirm you did not die in a car accident . . . and then the fun (if you can call it that) begins.

I felt the opposite of you, Flash. The whole thing to me seems so ludicrous...next of kin you never heard of, millions of dollars in cash, confirm I am living....OMG, I thought, who would ever believe it as real?

Of course and I agree. At the same time I have been rather astonished by who I am related to that I never heard of a relationship. Decades ago I saw photos of a private collection of a particular object in a magazine. My Mom told me that the collection belonged to her Uncle George. The reason for the article was that the collection was being sold to a major museum. She had not seen her Uncle since she was a child so was a little surprised to receive a substantial (though not outrageously large) check from his estate after he died. Needless to say nobody asked her to front any $$ to collect her check. She received an initial letter from the executors that she was a beneficiary and about a year later the check arrived without fanfare. Obviously not something that is handled or would be handled by email.

Immediately, I know this is spam/scam. Giving the benefit of the doubt, I can see that some may think 'Let's see where this goes - just in case'. Providing personal info is the downfall there.

Yes, definitely. And indeed the email contact is the key. Any executor worth a hill of beans would not need to be asking your name and address. We needed to find an address for an heir to my Aunt's estate and took the reasonable route of contacting family to find out a current mailing address. Person #1 didn't know but passed along the letter to person #2 who knew where the kid was.

I've been tempted before to reply to one of those bogus emails, wind the scammer into a series of frustrating emails back and forth, and then publish it all in a blog for everyone to enjoy.

So many things to do and so little time these days....

There are a few wonderful and hysterical tales of scamming the scammers out there on the internet. My favorites were someone who played along a Nigerian scammer that they had wired the money to a distant town and running them all over the map with 'oops, the money bounced back to me', etc. Then there was a gal who was sent an oversize check to purchase a horse she was selling, she ran them around in circles for a while. But I think all of us have better ways to spend our time.

It was about 5 years back when the 419 scams became so popular. Of course I never went for any of them, but I did love to visit a site www.419eater.com rather the same concept you have Steve.

Lynlee

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new way to run the mystery shopper scam

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